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DAF Resources

Library of tools for your organization

Donor Advised Funds 

What is a DAF or Donor-advised fund providers typically fall into three categories:

  • National (or commercial) fund providers such as Fidelity Charitable, Schwab Charitable, or National Philanthropic Trust (NPT).

  • These entities are also referred to as national charities and are often independent providers of donor- advised funds (DAFs) or are affiliated with financial institutions.

  • Many single-issue charities sometimes offer DAFs in a specific subsector, such as religion or human services like Jewish federations, women's donor groups, and higher education institutions.

  • Community foundations, which usually manage and house funds within the foundation, are the oldest providers of DAFs in the United States. Examples of these providers include the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the New York Community Trust, the Cleveland Foundation, and the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation

 

Gifts to DAFs are counted wherever the DAF-sponsoring organization is located:

  • Gifts to national DAFs like Fidelity Charitable or Schwab Charitable are counted in the public-society benefit subsector.

  • Gifts to single-issue DAFs are counted in the category in which the DAF-sponsoring organization is usually counted. For example, contributions to a DAF at Stanford University would be counted under giving to education. 

  • Gifts to DAFs at community foundations are counted under giving to foundations.

 

Giving USA treats DAFs similarly to other pass-through organizations like the United Way. This approach helps to reduce the double-counting of contributions to these funds and recipient organizations.

 

  • In May 2023, Vanguard Charitable launched Grant Payments, a partnership with PayPal that makes it possible for DAF donors to issue a grant to a nonprofit instantaneously. Within the first year of the program, Grant Payments was used to send nearly 35,000 grants totaling $467 million to 8,051 nonprofits. The tool allows payments of up to $10 million with no fees for the DAF-sponsoring organization or recipient nonprofit.

 

(from Giving USA) 

Purple Flower

DAF Day (October 10th)

DAF Day is a new kind of giving day that reframes how donor advised funds are used: and who uses them. A collaborative group of leading nonprofits, fundraising platforms and DAF providers are coming together to activate their collective audience of millions of donors for a single day of unprecedented generosity with DAFs on October 10th, 2024.

 

More information: 

Chinese Wisteria

What is Chariot & DAFpay

​Chariot is the payments company dedicated to Donor Advised Fund (DAF) giving. DAFpay, Chariot’s 3-click DAF payment option, allows donors to give with their DAF anywhere they are inspired to give online. This enables donors to use their DAF in more places, more often, and unlocks more DAF gifts with better information for nonprofits. Chariot powers direct DAF payments for many of the largest nonprofits in the country, such as the American Cancer Society, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and the Michael J. Fox Foundation.

2024 National Study of Donor Advised Funds​

Our key findsings: 

  • Nearly half of all DAFs (49%) had total assets at the end of 2021 of less than $50,000. Only

  • 7% of DAFs had balances of $1 million or more—and only 1% had a balance over $10 million.

  • DAFs are a relatively young philanthropic vehicle, with increased use in recent years. The vast majority of DAFs in this study (81%) were opened after 2010, and over one in four DAFs in the dataset were opened after 2020.

  • Most DAF accounts (97%) were advised by individuals or families. Institutional DAFs — those advised by corporations or other organizations — only compose about 3% of all DAFs.

  • Members of the Baby Boomer generation represented nearly half (49%) of all advisors. Accordingly, the most frequent ages for donor advisors were between 55 and 80 years old.

  • About 9% of DAFs were Endowed, meaning they have spending policies that restrict their annual grantmaking to ensure long-term use.

  • Almost all DAFs (92%) have a succession plan in place that establishes control of the funds after the original donors are no longer living. Approximately 30% of DAFs designate the sponsor or another nonprofit organization to receive remaining funds.

Purple Flower

What is Chariot & DAFpay

TBD

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